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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577186">Worthier than he knows</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback'>anactoriatalksback</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, And Jessica Nelson North, And John Fuller, Come Eating, Established Relationship, James is going to love and cherish Francis and Francis is just going to have to take it so there, M/M, Mirror Sex, My sincere apologies to TS Eliot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rimming, Self-Esteem Issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:47:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,317</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis has no use for mirrors. James wants to change that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>132</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Worthier than he knows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Greater seniority, thinks Francis Crozier, brings many benefits.</p><p>A half-crown more per week. More deference, which is tiresome, but occasionally – very occasionally – greater authority. A superior sort of party, which is an irritant, with a superior sort of person, which is a calamity. But also superior whisky, which helps to blot out the other superiorities, or at least hush them to a dull roar.</p><p>More to the point, greater seniority means someone to dress him, gentle hands to unbutton and button him, careful clever hands with a lifetime of tending to men and women who need a veil between them and the world<a href="#_ftn1" id="_ftnref1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>.</p><p>Someone else will attend to brushing and shining and combing and tucking for him, so that the face that meets the faces that he meets is the cleanest, smoothest and most highly-polished that he can contrive, without ever having to look at himself.</p><p>Greater seniority means Crozier never has to look in a mirror ever again. He sees enough of himself reflected back in arched eyebrows, or gazes sliding off him, or polite murmured ‘Most interesting’s, or sudden, crowded silences followed by a tactful change of subject.</p><p>He knows the face that meets other faces. His glass will lie to him or confirm, bluntly, what he already knows. Either way, the information is valueless, and Crozier of all people knows the importance of shedding ballast where need be.</p><p>No, Crozier has no use for the mirror, or the mirror for him.</p><p>But then, improvidently, ridiculously, there is James Fitzjames.</p><p>James is no stranger to mirrors, or any reflective surface really. James is all long lines and capes, glossy hair and tassels and sabres and spurs and dress-swords and Hessians a-twinkle. His thin mouth makes an array of shapes that eat away at Crozier with a vexed itch. He must practise them, thinks Crozier, he must measure the shadows and crevices of the creases by his cheeks with every twitch and curl of that narrow patrician gash, how he must love his mirror, how his mirror must love him.</p><p><em>I’ll be your mirror</em>, he finds himself thinking, violently and often, <em>I’ll tell you truly what you are. Look here, look at me, I’ll give you yourself back, I’ll gather it up by the bushel, I’ll deliver it to you in fistfuls.</em></p><p>But when he gets the chance – and he gets the chance often, after they come back to London, after James’s hand finds its way into his – well, when he gets the chance, Crozier cannot find it in himself to do as he promised.</p><p>Oh, James looks at him, and he looks back, arrested and helpless. James looks at him, and Crozier is no true mirror. James looks at him, and Crozier finds that he conducts an exchange each time, something familiar for something strange, complicated and involuntary. James looks at him, and he finds himself holding onto as much of James as he can. James looks at him, and he takes with him pieces of Crozier, wearing his Captain as lightly as he does everything else.</p><p>James still looks into the occasional mirror, which Crozier can forgive.</p><p>He has a little more difficulty, though, with James’s present suggestion.</p><p>‘I want to see you,’ says James. The colour is high in his cheeks, a little fuller now they’re back in England, but still carving great moraines in his long thin face.</p><p>Crozier gestures down to himself. ‘Feast yourself.’</p><p>‘I intend to,’ says James, seriously, and Crozier swallows. ‘But I want to - ’</p><p>‘Look at yourself,’ says Crozier, and grins. ‘You’re a popinjay, man.’</p><p>James jerks his chin – that abortive toss of his hair that Crozier had so keenly mourned the loss of, and is so unspeakably delighted to see return – and says ‘Us. I want to see <em>us</em>.’</p><p>His gaze is steady, the shadows pooling in his eyes and the hollows of his collarbones. Crozier thinks, dimly, that there was a time he had a defence against this man.</p><p>He suffers himself to be turned, on hands and knees, so that they face the long silver mirror that James uses to check the line of his waistcoat, and that Crozier hurries past, staring straight ahead.</p><p>He can see the wrought iron of the bed and the leaping shadows the candles throw onto the long pale lines of James, rising on his knees behind Crozier. His prick is stiffening, and Crozier throws a grin at him over his shoulder.</p><p>‘Sure, and do you even need me here, lad? Or would you prefer me to leave the two of you - ’ and he gestures between the mirror and James – ‘to your own devices?’</p><p>James looks at him and then gestures with his chin to the mirror.</p><p>‘I don’t need - ’ says Crozier.</p><p>James takes his chin and turns it so that, with some reluctance, Crozier cannot but look at himself. At himself, knees spread, pink and gold in the candlelight, with one of James’s hands spread on his arse.</p><p>He winces and screws his eyes shut, but then feels a warm weight on his back, a voice whispering hotly ‘This. I wanted to see this.’</p><p>Crozier opens his eyes, then, but keeps them lowered. ‘Look, then,’ he says.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James, on a sigh. He’s disappointed, thinks Crozier, and keeps his eyes lowered, his jaw set. He knows the weight of disappointment, especially when he’s the one doing the disappointing. It’s a familiar load, and Crozier’s back is broad.</p><p>He feels the brush of James’s hair, then, as James presses a brief kiss to the underside of his jaw, then disposes himself between Crozier’s knees so that his cock rubs briefly between his cheeks. Crozier swallows, his own prick twitching.</p><p>‘<em>Oh</em>,’ says James, and turns his head so that his chin is resting on Crozier’s shoulder. The better to watch himself with, thinks Crozier, and smiles. He thinks, if he turns his head, he’ll be able to watch James without needing to look at himself.</p><p>He does, and opens his eyes, and realises that James is staring directly at him.</p><p>‘James,’ says Crozier, fighting the irrepressible and absurd urge to cover himself, ‘what are you - ’</p><p>‘I want you to see,’ says James, ‘I have no use for skulking or wasting away in my own reflection. I’m vain, Francis, I’m not Narcissus.’</p><p>Crozier gropes for James’s hand and holds it to his own chest. ‘I was codding you before,’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to give out to you. Forgive me.’</p><p>James kisses him, quick and somehow chastising. ‘Tease me all you want,’ he says, ‘You know I can take it. But I want you to see.’</p><p>And then he presses his mouth to Crozier’s shoulder, then between his shoulder-blades, and further down his back, down, down to the curve of his fundament.</p><p>Francis finds himself holding his breath, which he releases on a sigh as James bites softly at the place where his arse meets his thigh, then opens his mouth to tongue and suck.</p><p>‘Jaysus,’ he breathes, and feels James smile against the skin of his cheek. And then James moves to his cleft, and Crozier lets his head drop.</p><p>James is careful in this, meticulous and thorough. As though Crozier is a rare and delicate fruit that must be handled gently lest he split open and spill. And Crozier bristles at that, but then thinks, as James mouths at his hole and slips his tongue in, that the care’s as much for James as it is for himself<a href="#_ftn2" id="_ftnref2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a>.</p><p>And if he is stern with himself – as Crozier tries to be – he will admit that somewhere, somewhere in the stormcloud of James’s hair tickling the soft flesh of his inner thigh, of James’s long fingers gripping him to steady himself, in the slow, wet, precise crawl of his tongue around his hole, bristling be damned, he feels that James is peeling him open, layer by layer, and that he is grateful for the care.</p><p>James’s tongue flattens across his hole, and then points as he darts in, and Crozier gasps wetly against his forearms. And then James eases out, and he leaves tiny nipping kisses along his cleft before sitting up.</p><p>‘What - ’</p><p>And then Crozier sees James reaching for the oil, ducks his head and smiles.</p><p>James circles his hole first, lightly, before inserting the first finger. Crozier sighs and shuffles his knees further apart. Easily the first finger goes in, probes, finds the place inside Crozier that makes him buckle and grunt.</p><p>Then the second finger, wet and slick, making room, exploring, retreating, stroking deftly over that place again.</p><p>When James withdraws and gropes for the oil again, Crozier’s squirming, his prick hard, ready and tremulous.</p><p>‘James - ’ he says, a warning.</p><p>And James slips three fingers in, and the breath rushes out of Crozier.</p><p>Careful, still, maddeningly deliberate, and Crozier rocks back against the pressure, an admonition forming on his tongue, when – with unmannerly abruptness – James removes his fingers.</p><p>‘James,’ says Crozier, head snapping around, ‘what the deuce - ’</p><p>James is looking at him, eyes agleam in the lamplight. He leans forward and takes Crozier’s chin in his hand, turning it gently but inexorably forward to the mirror.</p><p>‘Watch,’ he says.</p><p>Crozier’s eyes rest unwillingly upon himself. He has no appetite for the sight of himself – his blotchy, freckled, grizzled self – but he manages a brief, curt nod. He’s rewarded by James’s blinding smile and the return of those long, clever fingers.</p><p>James plies him with purpose now, seeking intently every place inside Crozier that makes him buck and writhe. Crozier, mindful of James’s instructions, is confronted with himself, flushed down to his chest, trembling and pushing back against James’s fingers, mouth wet and open as he pants.</p><p>He blushes even more, squirming at the sight of himself, spread open, begging with his body, hair plastered to his forehead with his sweat. But then he hears a whispered ‘Francis’, and his eyes fly up to meet James’s in the glass.</p><p>James is staring at him, enraptured. As though he’s been given a new continent on a new planet. He passes his tongue over his lips and says quietly ‘<em>Francis</em>.’</p><p>And then he bends so that his long body drapes over Crozier’s back and his cock nudges, insistently, against the underside of Crozier’s bollocks.</p><p>Crozier shudders. Watches himself shudder. Watches himself moisten his own lips and say ‘James.’</p><p>‘What?’ says James, hotly, in his ear. His teeth fasten onto Crozier’s lobe and Crozier finds his eyes fluttering shut.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James’s voice, in a very different tone, and he begins to straighten up, pull his fingers away. Crozier’s eyes slam open and he glares at the glass.</p><p>‘It’s a slave-driver you are,’ he says, but cannot forbear a grin at James’s laugh, or the approving stroke of his fingers inside.</p><p>‘You still have breath to complain,’ says James.</p><p>‘I do that,’ says Crozier. ‘Whose fault might that be, now, d’ye think?’</p><p>‘My apologies,’ says James smoothly, and drives his fingers in harder. He doesn’t stop until Crozier is splayed out, chest pressed to the bed and arse aloft, shaking and cursing and drenched in sweat.</p><p>‘James,’ says Crozier, his voice a thin rasp, ‘James, James, for God’s sake.’</p><p>James’s eyes meet his and he nods. Crozier shudders at the long wet sound of his fingers leaving his hole. Watches his mouth form a whine at the unconscionable emptiness. Watches his mouth clamp shut as he strangles the sound.</p><p>He hears the sound of James slicking himself up before he looks up. That long slender prick, glistening under the ministrations of James’s thin white hand. The bob of James’s throat as he works himself. Christ, but was Crozier’s throat ever this dry?</p><p>James looks at him, then, and says again ‘Watch.’</p><p>Crozier casts his eyes heavenwards. ‘I <em>am</em> watching.’</p><p>James bends down. Lets his cock slide between Crozier’s cheeks, slyly, a voluptuous promise. Crozier’s shoulders rise and fall in a long, long sigh.</p><p>‘Watch,’ says James.</p><p>‘I – I <em>am</em>.’</p><p>‘Watch,’ says James, as he lets his cock slide down so that it nudges at the sensitive skin at the base of Crozier’s prick.</p><p>‘I <em>am</em>, James, I – ah, saints.’</p><p>James takes the head of his cock and circles it around Crozier’s hole. That long-throttled whine bursts from Crozier’s throat now, unbidden, and the only acknowledgement James vouchsafes is an imperious ‘Francis.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ says Crozier, watching his own mouth shape the words as his fist clenches in the bedspread, ‘yes, damn you, yes, <em>yes</em>, now will you just – <em>ahhh</em>.’</p><p>James’s cock has entered him, and the breath leaves Crozier. James leans forward, slips his arm around Crozier’s chest, hand fanning out on his breast, and hauls him upright so that he’s sitting up in James’s lap.</p><p>Crozier’s throat clicks as he looks at himself, laid bare, chest heaving under James’s hand, prick hard and red against his belly. He’s splayed obscenely wide, thighs on either side of James’s narrow knees, impaled on James’s cock. He looks at the place where they’re joined, where James has tongued and mouthed and fingered him open to receive him. He looks at the profligate, sluttish spread of himself, the glisten of the base of James’s prick and the rim of his own hole, wet with oil and spit. He squirms at the sight, and keens at the slide of James’s prick inside him at the movement. James groans, deep and low, and presses a hot kiss to the place where Crozier’s neck meets his shoulder.</p><p>‘D’you feel that?’ he asks, grinding his hips and pulling a moan from Crozier’s throat. ‘Do you see?’</p><p>‘James,’ says Crozier, uselessly, trying to sink further, ‘James, God, I - ’</p><p>James’s hand moves down, one on each of Crozier’s thighs, and pulls them even further apart. It’s absurd, this, to be pawed at and disposed of like a sapling, rather than the gnarled and blasted oak he knows he is. It’s absurd, and touching, and entirely misplaced, and Crozier gasps at the handling like a milkmaid or a lady.</p><p>He’ll be sore tomorrow, he thinks, it’s a young man’s game, this. And then he sees James’s hands, one gripping his hip, the other high on his thigh, hot and proprietorial, and finds it hard to care.</p><p>‘Do you see?’ says James’s voice again, and his eyes rise to meet his. ‘Thunder and turf, Francis, do you see how I want you?’</p><p>And Crozier can see, he can see, and he’s never had to before, and he finds his eyes shutting because there are some things too terrifying and wonderful to contemplate whole and entire and at once.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James’s voice in his ear, and he’s steeling himself for a command, but the silver thread of a plea has him opening his eyes, breathless and lost.</p><p>James hooks his chin over Crozier’s shoulder, one hand coming up to rest over his heart.</p><p>‘I prefer to receive, you know,’ he says conversationally, thumbing idly at Crozier’s nipple.</p><p>Crozier nods, turning his head just a little so that he can look at the play of the lamplight in James’s hair. He does know. James does prefer to receive and oh, but he’s beautiful on his back or on his hands and knees, the long supple lines of him, the bow of his spine, the lovely tension of his throat.</p><p>‘But you,’ says James, rubbing his cheek against Crozier’s throat, ‘You, Francis, you,’ and he crushes his mouth to Crozier’s, hungry and seeking and with a welcome violence. Crozier chases him when he pulls away, panting and wild-eyed.</p><p>‘You,’ says James, and swallows. ‘I wanted to have you,’ and his hips roll, once, for Crozier to grunt, winded, ‘I wanted – every way I could get you.’ His hands tighten. ‘<em>Any</em> way.’</p><p>‘You have me,’ says Crozier, his own hand lying atop James’s, ‘you do, James.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ says James, and Crozier’s heart bounds at the wondering, gloating edge in his voice.</p><p>Crozier has made a habit of appraising his own worth so that he can measure to the nearest scruple how much he is undervalued. He thinks he knows well the measure of himself, how much he weighs. He is not a boastful man, but neither is he in the habit of self-deprecation: what need, when everyone else is so quick to do it for him?</p><p>So who can blame him if he sounds rough and unready when he says to James ‘I’m not what you think, James.’</p><p>‘Are you not?’ James is unperturbed, amused even. ‘And what do I think?’</p><p>When Crozier doesn’t answer, James says ‘I think that I want you. I think,’ one long hand draws down over Crozier’s belly, ‘I think that I’ve always wanted you.’</p><p>‘James,’ says Crozier, grinding helplessly against that hand as it presses against his cock.</p><p>‘I think,’ says James, ‘that I look at you and I hardly know if I want to <em>have</em> you or <em>be</em> you.’ His breathing is harsher now, his hips circling restlessly. Crozier fumbles blindly for his hand and brings it to his mouth, biting at the pad of his thumb.</p><p>‘You’re better,’ says Crozier, an urgent rasp, ‘Better than – James, you must - ’</p><p>‘I think,’ says James, ‘that when I am inside you I feel…safe. Held.’ He pauses, brings his lips to Crozier’s ear. ‘Anchored.’</p><p>‘James,’ says Crozier, watching James’s long fingers trail up his thigh. He sucks in a breath as James’s fingers circle his hole, grazing the place where they are joined.</p><p>‘Ja- <em>aaaahhhhhh</em>.’</p><p>‘I think,’ says James, ‘that I want you <em>closer</em>.’ His hips snap up, and Crozier’s head falls back. One large hand curls around his throat and squeezes. Crozier swallows and feels the movement under James’s hand. A thread of a voice in his ear says ‘<em>Watch</em>.’</p><p>Crozier watches, eyes skittering over his own flushed body, bathed in sweat, at James’s eyelashes fluttering against his thin cheeks with those long, deep, deeply beloved furrows, at the glisten of James’s cock as it drags out of him and punches back in, at the bob of his own hard neglected prick. He hears the wet slap of flesh against flesh, watches his own Adam’s apple bob.</p><p>James’s thrusts are getting hastier now, more erratic. There is a certain banked fury in the scrape of his cheek against Crozier’s throat. Crozier turns his head and says, clearly, ‘Spend.’</p><p>James groans softly at the instruction and Crozier watches his own hand tighten on James’s thigh. Again he says ‘Spend’ and clenches down on James to drive home the point.</p><p>James’s arms tighten convulsively around Crozier as a deep moan is torn from his throat. One thrust, two, and then James sinks his teeth into Crozier’s shoulder and Crozier sees his own teeth bare in savage satisfaction at the spreading warmth inside him.</p><p>James slumps against Crozier, panting wetly against his neck. He lifts his head, slowly, pressing his lips to Crozier’s temple, and then opens his eyes. He looks at Crozier’s prick, a direct and assessing glance. Crozier raises an eyebrow and grins. He says ‘I’ll be needing <em>you</em> to watch, now.’ He moves his hand to his cock, but James reaches out to forestall him. Their eyes meet and James shakes his head. ‘I’m spent,’ he says, ‘not <em>incapable</em>.’</p><p>Crozier’s eyebrow shoots up again, but he lets his hand fall away. He raises his chin and waits for James to look at him before he says ‘Frig me, then.’</p><p>James smiles and nods. He braces his hand on Crozier’s shoulder and withdraws, and Crozier swallows at the fat trail of his release, shining on his thighs.</p><p>James seems to be mesmerised by the sight as well. His fingers twitch, and then return to Crozier’s hole, punching a keening gasp from his throat. The two of them shiver at the soft squelching sounds of James’s fingers plunging in and out, and then out they come, coated in his spend, slick and gleaming in the candlelight.</p><p>James trails those fingers up Crozier’s prick, hard and straining. Crozier shudders and James’s other arm rises up to loop around his chest. Once again a voice breathes ‘Watch.’</p><p>Crozier doesn’t need the instruction. He can’t take his eyes off the long fingers leaving a slick winding trail up his cock, the thumb playing with his slit, the rich wet sounds of James’s hand dragging up and down Crozier’s length, collecting the clear fluid leaking from his head and spreading it.</p><p>When James’s hand dips down to Crozier’s bollocks, cupping and rolling them, Crozier cannot forebear the convulsion that racks him. James’s arm tightens around him as he gives a final squeeze and moves back to Crozier’s cock.</p><p>James’s hold is tenacious, careful, exacting, intent on charting every crease and vein on Crozier’s prick. His other hand grips Crozier’s shoulder as he begins to tremble in his grasp, watching the shadows of the candles leap over his face and chest and cock. He can feel the gathering wave beat at him from inside, an almost threatening immensity.</p><p>‘James,’ he says, passing his tongue over cracked lips. He hears the plea in his voice and thinks, dimly, that he might blush later to remember it. But now, red of cheek and chest, damp of brow, quaking and with fists clenching uselessly on James’s thighs, his own thighs and cock glistening with James’s release, he is entirely singleminded.</p><p>James’s hand speeds up on Crozier’s cock. He presses a single biting kiss to Crozier’s cheek and says ‘Watch.’</p><p>And Crozier watches as he seizes in James’s arms and spills in long hot white stripes over James’s palm and up his own chest.</p><p>He sags in James’s arms, chest heaving. When he can bestir himself again, he raises heavy eyes to James, who is watching him with a familiar carnivorous fixity.</p><p>In moments Crozier is on his back and James is shinning down his length, mouth hovering over his chest. One hand nudges Crozier’s chin up so that his eyes are back on the mirror.</p><p>Flickering and upside down, he watches James’s mouth descend, tongue lapping up Crozier’s spend from his chest, then moving slick and urgent over his softening cock. Crozier twitches under his ministrations, lets out sobs that he cannot restrain, but James murmurs ‘Shhhhh’ against his tender skin and continues with well-bred persistence until Crozier is panting anew, ripe and bruised like roughly-handled fruit.</p>
<hr/><p>Afterwards, they are lying together. Crozier faces away from the mirror: he cannot quite hold back his flinch at the sight of himself, the memory scraping at the heart of him, unpeeled and now with the unpleasing luxury of mortification.</p><p>James’s hand brushes his hair off his forehead. ‘I wanted to show you,’ he says, his voice heavy.</p><p>Crozier lifts his hand to his lips. ‘You did,’ he says. Hard to explain, he thinks, of the weight of being desired thrust so carelessly into his hands, <em>here, take this, it’s easy, you’ll soon get the knack of it</em>. He’s used to being disregarded, or looked around, or hidden. He’s even had experience of being wanted, furtively and with a febrile leaping shame. This thing, this bright-eyed thing, open and seeking and hungry, he does not know if he’s constituted for it.</p><p>Maybe if he’d had more practice. Maybe if he could reach back and give himself at twenty to James: raw-boned and angular, greener then but clinging still to invincibility. If any edition of Crozier could be taught that he could be loved, he thinks, it must have been that one.</p><p>He says to James, ‘I’d make you free of myself at twenty – title clear.’</p><p>James rests his chin on Crozier's chest, digging into the flesh. It’s deeply uncomfortable and Crozier loves it fiercely. ‘I don’t think I’d have deserved you at twenty.’</p><p><em>Or I you</em>, thinks Crozier, <em>I was an idiot. But</em>, he thinks, <em>I was twenty, and my God that has to count for something.</em></p><p>Out loud he says ‘Twenty’s not a time for deserving. We earn our beginnings through our endings.’</p><p>‘I see,’ says James, ‘and when do I earn you?’</p><p><em>At twenty</em>, thinks Crozier, <em>you earned me and better</em>, <em>and would that I could have known you then so I could have deserved </em>you.</p><p>He says ‘I think that’s my question to answer.’</p><p>James moves up suddenly, face hovering inches from Crozier’s. He says, evenly, ‘stop that.’</p><p>‘James - ’</p><p>‘I thought I showed you,’ says James, ‘you told me I showed you.’</p><p>Crozier reaches up so he can cradle James’s cheek. He says ‘Mirrors aren’t for the likes of me, James.’</p><p>James considers him for a moment and then sighs, flopping down next to Crozier. ‘I think, you know,’ he says, ‘that you aren’t to be trusted in the matter.’</p><p>‘With my opinion of myself?’</p><p>James hums.</p><p>‘And who is, then?’</p><p>James lifts an eloquent eyebrow.</p><p>‘It’s a heavy thing, you know,’ says Crozier, watching him, ‘to carry the measure of another man.’</p><p>James shrugs, an irritatingly debonair gesture even naked and recumbent. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I couldn’t carry it.’</p><p>And he wouldn’t, thinks Crozier. James has aged so infuriatingly gracefully in so many things, sometimes Crozier forgets that one of time’s blessings to him has been that he now knows his own powers and is content for them to be known by others.</p><p><em>And after all, why not?</em>, thinks Crozier, and tastes the recklessness in his mouth. <em>I trust him with so much already, why not with this too? </em></p><p> </p><p><a href="#_ftnref1" id="_ftn1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Jopson, thinks Crozier, if I could knit together a heaven for you from my prayers and make sure you had your rightful place in it, I’d learn the habit of prayer.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref2" id="_ftn2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> There is something so unremittingly <em>James</em> about being tongued and licked and sucked and feasted on with such fastidiousness. In the reflection that James would as soon finger him before licking him open as he would use a knife to pick up his venison.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The title of this story is taken from 'Arctic Voyage', by Jessica Nelson North, which has been fucking me up on a daily basis ever since the fabulous <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve">reserve</a> introduced me to it.</p><p>Said fabulous reserve also soothed me when I moaned to her about early iterations of this 'ere thing.</p><p>My tumblr handle is <a href="https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/">itsevidentvery</a> if you'd like to come yell with me there.</p><p>A handy-dandy rebloggable link for this fic is <a href="https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/620208410156269568/worthier-than-he-knows-anactoriatalksback-the">here</a> if you are so inclined.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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